Please, tell me there's a phone coming along. Light Phone made a mistake not going Android. You totally nailed it with that casually dropped Spotify icon in that shot!
I personally have zero use for a tablet. But if I can have an eink phone, with all the authentication apps I need to connect to work and do banking (and maps and Spotify), I'll drop that iPhone that is frying the brains of my kids instantly.
I've been using an e-ink phone (HiSense A9) full-time for a year, and it's pretty great. Especially things like biking navigation in sunlight are a huge plus.
The Daylight Computer technology is super interesting and a friend of mine that saw one at some tech festival a while ago said it really is that good. Unfortunately an Android tablet is about the least interesting product you could make with that technology, for me. A phone, a laptop or a full-size computer monitor would be a different game.
I've never owned an android, but for any android folks: how do you all think about device security/privacy when the manufacture is relatively unknown and overseas?
I really wanted to get one, but didn't know the risks associated with this.
I tried grapheneos, and it’s great out of the box. It’s snappy, 3x manufacturer claimed battery life, and the camera sort of works (everything else did except the pixel fast charger).
However, to run third party apps (especially those that use GPS, including lyft and uber), you have to install the Google Play Services, which are sandboxed, but cut the battery life by 66% back to the manufacturer claims (so I assume at least some of the continuous surveillance crap was running / successfully phoning home).
On top of that, at any given time, 5-10% of apps would crash on startup.
They gave java stacktraces saying they got an unchecked null pointer exception when looking for random system services. The set of apps would change randomly over time, as companies only test on android, and take a while to fix such low-priority bugs.
Also, it was missing a bunch of functionality I take for granted on iPhone, and that I ended up needing (like crdt-based notes).
On the bright side, android’s non-carplay bluetooth support is miles ahead of iOS.
Tl:dr: Degoogled android would be nice, but don’t bother.
That makes me wonder what your use case for it is. I use the reMarkable and the only time it didn’t do something I wanted was when I wanted more than 5 layers per image.
The HiSense A5, A7 and A9 range of phones could be your answer. Problem is it is a Chinese domestic market phone. A9 does have a GSI of LineageOS with working EINK refresh modes available on XDA so this could be your ticket if the 4G bands are available in your country (basically not the US).
They were still making major design changes just one week ago (first completely removing, then providing a front-facing camera option after previously changing the screen dimensions and device form factor). There's basically no way it ships on their timeline (currently Sept 2024), if it ships at all. They nailed the slick marketing, but have been full of nonsensical timelines and promises.
I own the Light Phone 2 and do like it a lot, but it's a bit too limited and some of the promises of Minimal would solve some of the pain points that Light hasn't managed to, so I definitely see the appeal.
But everything I've seen indicates that Minimal is going to be heavily delayed, if it's not an outright scam. Meanwhile, the Light Phone 2 has been around for years now, and they're planning to release updated hardware later this year.
the OS is slow. the keyboad is laggy and lacking in spatial accuracy to the point where i have to slow myself and retype text messages constantly. don't get me wrong - i'm glad they made it. but i've preorded the Minimal phone and am really looking forward to trying it.
Off-topic, but anyone know if Google Fi would make it easy to switch between two phones without too much hassle?
I'd love to have a second phone that I could take around when I'm not expecting to do any photography or anything. (I know, I could have a dedicated camera instead, but I take pictures on my phone...)
They provide free data-only sim cards. And you used to be able to sync all of your texts and calls in the hangout app, but they got rid of that. The last time I tried syncing the Messages app to a data o my device, it didn't work too well. That was a while ago though so not sure if that is still the case.
Swapping sim cards is probably too much of a hassle. You could just make the epaper phone your primary, and drag along the second phone as needed. Also, there is no reason an epaper phone can't take photos. Plenty of camera gear out there where the viewfinder/preview screen is a very poor preview of the final image and regardless, most folks just snap away with their phones and look at the images later. Modern smartphones do most of the work regarding camera settings.
I personally have zero use for a tablet. But if I can have an eink phone, with all the authentication apps I need to connect to work and do banking (and maps and Spotify), I'll drop that iPhone that is frying the brains of my kids instantly.